On April 15, 1630, the fourth day of the third month of the third year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, the northwest corner of Hainan Island was off the coast of Danzhou.

Three large ships rowed briskly across the sea and sailed towards Danzhou Bay. The shape of these boats is markedly different from that of traditional Chinese sailing boats, not only is the hull more narrow, the mast is higher, the sails are also made of soft canvas, and one of them has a row of movable windows with a diameter of one foot and four inches on the side of the boat. However, the fishermen on the nearby fishing boats just looked up and continued to do the work at hand, they recognized that these were the boats of the Haihan people in the south, and they had often entered the port of Danzhou in the past two years, and they had long been accustomed to this.

However, the passengers carried by this fleet are not simply trading as usual, He Xi, the director of the Haihan Security Department, and Wang Tom, the commander-in-chief of the Haihan militia navy, are both on the ship, accompanied by a whole reinforced platoon of militia soldiers, disguised as crew members, servants, etc., as their escorts.

The purpose of their trip was to investigate the situation in Danzhou Bay and Danzhou City, and to prepare for the possible outbreak of armed conflict in the seizure of Danzhou within the year. Of course, if everyone thinks of a way together, it is not completely impossible to take the city peacefully.

"The first time I came to Danzhou was through that year, when I followed the Li family's merchant ship to Qiongzhou Mansion City immediately, and then I thought that since I had arrived here, I simply finished the place I should go, so I followed the Li family's caravan, from Chengmai and Lingao all the way to Danzhou. He Xi remembered the situation at that time, and couldn't help but sigh a little: "At that time, I ran so far alone, and now I think about it, I feel that I am quite bold!"

"How dare the Executive Committee hand over such a heavy burden to you?" replied Tom Wang with a smile. After a few years in the system, he is no longer as straightforward and doesn't know how to be a person as when he first came, and now he also knows how to praise others at the right time.

"At that time, there was no way!" Wang Tom shook his head and sighed: "There are no available people under your hands, and a group of people in your military can't get out, so you can only go out yourself...... In front is the White Horse Well, after this gorge, inside is Danzhou Bay. ”

Danzhou Bay is located west of Danzhou, and the strait at the entrance is only about six or seven hundred meters wide, and the area of the bay is larger than the two major ports in Sanya. When Tao Donglai and others planned the crossing operation, Danzhou was actually one of the alternative destinations, there was a natural harbor, and the population density in the vicinity was also higher than that of Yazhou, which could save a lot of effort in the initial development. However, considering that there is no commanding height here to defend the bay, there is no mineral source and timber resources for continuous exploitation, and the most important thing is that it is only a few miles away from Danzhou City, and there are many settled people along the bay.

Although Danzhou is one of the major commercial ports in the northern part of Qiongzhou Island, its development and prosperity are much inferior to those of Shengli Port and Sanya Port, and even compared with Wanshan Port outside the Pearl River Estuary. When Haihan's ships approached the wharf, they could see that there were only six or seven boats docked on the shore, almost all of them Cantonese sailing ships with a displacement of sixty or seventy tons.

"I heard Anthy say that there is a salt pan in this bay?" Wang Tom looked at the dock that was already very close, and suddenly asked.

"There is a salt farm, just north of the bay, which used to be the largest official salt farm on Qiongzhou Island. The method they use is very similar to ours in our salt farm, which is to use seawater to dry salt, but the scale of production is far less than ours. When they were still using stone troughs to dry salt, we directly used cement salt drying tanks, and there were all kinds of seawater irrigation devices, and the production capacity was much stronger than theirs. If I'm not mistaken, the salt works here have been bankrupt for almost two years!" He Xi proudly introduced what he knew to Tom Wang.

"Daming's official salt farm, there is also a saying that it is bankrupt?" Wang Tom obviously does not know much about the current state of the salt market.

"Bankruptcy is not quite accurate. He Xi nodded and admitted that he used the wrong words: "It is more appropriate to call the work stop." Because the price of salt is almost lower than their production costs, the salt merchants have turned to us to buy low-cost salt, and the salt farmers here have no way to make a living by selling salt, and many people have simply fled to us. More than 80 of the naturalized people of Yinggehai Salt Farm moved directly from Danzhou Salt Farm. ”

"Speaking of this, I also remembered one thing, wasn't there a coal mine here in Danzhou before? Later, it is said that it was also forced to stop work by the low-cost anthracite coal transported from the Black Earth Port, and I remember that the militia conscripted during that time, but it collected a lot of Danzhou miners!" Wang Tom also recalled with emotion the impact of the rise of Haihan on Danzhou.

He Xi added: "Not only that, I looked at the report of the Ministry of Security yesterday, since the second half of 1627, there has been a steady stream of people migrating to Sanya from Danzhou, most of them were voluntary immigrants recruited by Yaxing on our behalf in the early days, and later more and more people moved to Sanya on their own, not only salt farmers and miners, about two-thirds of the scholars we recruit now are from Danzhou!"

Tom Wang was stunned and said: "So much? I still remember that two years ago, I recruited scholars on the Yacheng side, and the effect was not very good, why is it so smooth on the Danzhou side?"

He Xi said with a smile: "Actually, the reason is not unusual at all, although Danzhou is not the capital of Qiongzhou Island, it is the real cultural center of this island." There are more scholars here in Danzhou than in other states and counties on the island combined. This same thing is worthless if there are too many, and there are always some students who don't mix well and have to find another way to make a living to support themselves. Even if the percentage of students who are willing to serve us is very low, it still can't stand the large number of people!"

"I see!" Tom Wang suddenly replied, "When we occupy this place, this scholar can also be regarded as a big gain!"

Danzhou's educational and cultural traditions can be said to have a long history, since the Northern Song Dynasty Qingli four years, about 600 years ago, Danzhou City has created the earliest school in Qiongzhou Island. Half a century later, the great writer Su Dongpo lived in Danzhou for three years, during which he set up education and recruited disciples, and since then the cultural atmosphere in Danzhou has flourished. Later, dozens of academies such as Lingchun Academy, Zhende Academy, Tunan Academy, and Yizhai Academy were built locally, and since the Northern Song Dynasty, there have been dozens of people who have won fame in the imperial examination, which is a miracle for a remote area like Qiongzhou Island.

But as He Xi said, there are a large number of scholars inside and outside Danzhou City, and among them, only a very few lucky people can get fame in the imperial examination, and they will only embark on a career in the official career. There are a large number of weak scholars who cannot lift their hands and shoulders and cannot carry them, and when they become adults, they need to find a job that can support themselves and their families, and these scholars who have not obtained fame can only do cheap jobs such as copying at most, which can only make ends meet.

The appearance of the Haihan people undoubtedly gave them another choice, as long as they could read through the Four Books and Five Classics, they would start with a monthly salary of five taels of silver. For those who have meritorious fame or other special abilities, they can further increase on this basis. At first, the scholars were a little distrustful of the employment of these foreign maritime merchants, but later, a teacher in a certain academy was hired by the Haihan people at a "sky-high price" of thirty taels of silver a month, and everyone knew that these maritime merchants were not just joking. Of course, no one knew that this teacher who accepted a high-priced hire was actually the cousin of a certain Tongzhi in Yacheng, and the whole process was just a good show of buying horse bones.

However, this kind of trick with a simple plot has received very good results, and many scholars who have studied hard have chosen to accept the employment of Haihan people and go to Sanya to do some clerical and educational work within their ability. At that time, when Ningqi recruited these people, the conditions were also very attractive - in addition to the salary they received from their work, Haihan would give paid leave to all those who wanted to participate in the imperial imperial examination, and those who wanted to go to the provincial capital Guangzhou to participate in the township examination would be escorted by Haihan, and even the food and lodging during the examination would be arranged. If someone wins the lifting and needs to go to the capital to take the exam, Haihan will also be fully responsible for all the expenses on the way back and forth.

This is great news for those who come from poor backgrounds. If they only rely on the income they earn from doing part-time jobs, most of them can save up for three years to pay for a trip to Guangzhou to take the exam. And now the Haihan people have taken the initiative to promise to bear this part of the cost for them, and this kind of benefit is difficult to find with lanterns. As for the more advanced exam, although it sounds tempting, it is only a game that a very small number of people are qualified to participate in, and it is more practical for ordinary readers to think more about how to get into the exam.

And the Haihan Civil Affairs Department, which issued these conditions, is not a big wrongdoer, and Ning Qi has long calculated the accounts in the middle very clearly. In fact, the cost of the imperial examination that these scholars need to take is not particularly large, and the children's examination is taken locally in Danzhou, at most, these scholars are sent back to Danzhou by boat to take the examination during the examination, which is delayed for seven to ten days. In Guangzhou, the cost of shipping and accommodation is the lowest cost price for Haihan, who is engaged in the shipping industry, and the more people who go, the lower the unit cost will be. Moreover, this kind of examination is only once every three years, and the time required can be completely deducted from their rest days, and I believe that these scholars will not raise any objections to this practice.

But after these people became naturalized Haihan and became naturalized citizens, would they really repeat the task of rushing for the exam once every three years as they did before? Ning Qi thought that this situation would not last long, and after these scholars entered the social system of Haihan, they would soon realize that the benefits they could get here were far better than their previous hard study. There may still be a few people who cling to their dreams, counting on being able to make a name for themselves and serve the imperial court, but there will certainly be more people who are aware of the benefits they can gain under the rule of Hai Han, and thus abandon the imperial examination, which has a very low chance of returning.

Ninki's inference was quickly proven in the later period. Of the first batch of Danzhou scholars who joined the Haihan cultural and educational system, less than 3% chose to retreat because they could not adapt to the local way of life, and the rest basically stayed. Before the township examination held last autumn, the relevant departments had received less than 20 applications for the imperial examination, which shows that the vast majority of scholars had changed their values and given up their former reputation for the imperial examination two years after entering the system.

After these scholars got a stable and comfortable life in Sanya, their stories automatically spread in the cultural circle of Danzhou and even the entire Qiongzhou Island, and more and more scholars who were unsatisfactory on the road to the imperial examination began to consider Haihan as a way out. Today, scholars from Danzhou have indeed become a force to be reckoned with in the naturalized system. Most of the teachers in the entire Haihan cultural and educational system, especially the most basic literacy and school-age children's education units, are from various academies in Danzhou.

And Haihan also gained another additional effect, that is, his reputation in Danzhou is quite good. Attaching importance to culture and education and building schools is a measure that will be appreciated by the cultural circles in any dynasty, and the Haihan people spend a lot on cultural and educational undertakings, as long as they are not blind, they can see it. Even those Danzhou students who did not accept Haihan's employment knew that there were a large number of free schools in Sanya, and school-age children under Haihan's rule could attend school for free, and adults also had special literacy classes for training. Although there are still a very small number of people who think that it is a bad practice to enter the school with mud legs, most people will still give a very positive evaluation of these measures of the Haihan people.

In addition, under the auspices of Ning Qi, Haihan also moved some of the measures implemented in Guangzhou directly to Danzhou. For example, it funded the holding of poetry competitions, cultural forums, art exhibitions and other activities, and took out a large number of Haihan glass stationery with very low cost but very popular among readers as prizes to attract literati to participate. By the beginning of this year, when the third Danzhou Cultural Festival was held, in addition to the local readers in Danzhou, there were even people who made a special trip from the Leizhou Peninsula to cross the sea to participate, which can be called a grand event in the local cultural circles.

At that time, Ning Qi also came to the scene in person and talked about the past and the present with the deans of various academies in Danzhou, and had a good time of being a literati and scholar. In Ning Qi's words, just seeing the handwriting of Su Dongpo and other big names collected in those academies, this trip is worth a thousand dollars.